In this file photo, presiding Orange County Juvenile Court Judge Robert Hutson counsels a 15-year-old who refuses to go to school as the child appears before him in his truancy court. FILE: MARK RIGHTMIRE, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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In this file photo, hundreds of parents attend a truancy meeting in Costa Mesa after receiving letters from the District Attorney's Office threatening prosecution because their children have too many absences from school. ROSE PALMISANO, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Examining truancy

State education officials define truancy as three or more unexcused absences or three or more unexcused tardies of 30 minutes or more in a school year:

• Overall truancy rate in California: 28.5 percent

• Overall rate in Orange County: 19.3 percent

• Elementary truancy rate in California: 29.6 percent

• Elementary rate in Orange County: 12.3 percent

Figures are for 2011-12 as reported by the California Department of Education, California Attorney General's Office

Truant students cost California schools $1.4 billion in education funding in 2010-11, according to a new report by the state Attorney General's Office.

About $87 million of that loss was in Orange County.

Although the cost to schools of state attendance funding was significant, the long-term costs to society from reduced earnings and increased crime is far more significant, the report states – an estimated $46 billion a year.

“How do we eliminate the murder problem in California?” Attorney General Kamala Harris said. “I would suggest to you, let's get rid of elementary school truancy.”

Chronic truancy, Harris said, can lead to a “waste of life, a waste of money and a waste of human potential.”

“In School and on Track” is the first report by the Attorney General's Office on truancy and chronic absenteeism, and is part of a push by the state's top law officer to reduce crime rates by promoting school attendance as a form of early prevention.

Third-graders with three or more unexcused absences are “twice as likely to drop out of high school” as their peers with fewer absences, according to a 2013 Maryland study cited in the report.

In turn, high school dropouts are far more likely to be perpetrators or victims of crime later in life, Harris said.

High school dropouts make up 82 percent of the country's prison population, according to the report.

“It almost seems like if you can't get them by the third grade, it's over,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said at a symposium on truancy held Monday in Los Angeles.

Students are classified as truants after they accumulate three or more unexcused absences. Chronically truant students are those who miss 10 percent or more of the school year.

The overall truancy rate for elementary school students in Orange County was 12.3 percent in 2011-12, according to the report – far below the state average of 29.6 percent.

“(That's) good compared with other districts, but of course we want to get better,” said Rick Riegel, coordinator of student services for the Orange County Department of Education.

Truancy data is released by the California Department of Education. This is the first study to examine the economic impact of those figures, Harris said.

Her office will report on the issue every year, she said, in the same way it releases an annual report on crime statistics in the state.

The truancy report calls for school districts to increase intervention efforts, collaborate with community organizations and prioritize attendance under a new state funding formula aimed at giving local districts greater flexibility in how they spend their money.

The report also calls on local district attorneys to collaborate with schools and prosecute cases where other intervention efforts have failed and suggests that the state modernize its data-collection system.

California is one of four states without a system for tracking individual student attendance over time, according to the report.

Without such a system, state officials are unable to see how many students have missed three days of school versus those who have missed three weeks – a crucial difference, Harris said.

“We can't afford to track this issue in a piecemeal approach,” Harris said.

State schools chief Tom Torlakson said his office will examine the cost associated with upgrading the state's information system to track student attendance and would also examine other systems for tracking the numbers over time.

Torlakson said he would “strongly encourage” districts across the state to include efforts to combat truancy and chronic absenteeism in the accountability plans that every district is in the process of creating to show how they will spend money under the new Local Control Funding Formula.

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